Why the CEO of this $15 billion data center builder wants his data centers to look like museums

Why the CEO of this $15 billion data center builder wants his data centers to look like museums Brian Sozzi · Executive Editor Wed, June 3, 2026 at 8:02 PM GMT+2 3 min read HUT BTC-USD Hut 8 ( HUT ) CEO Asher Genoot doesn’t want residents to hate on the massive data centers being built in their backyard. To push back on worries about soaring electricity bills, excessive noise, and water pollution, he’s putting his own touch on each site. “I've told our teams, I want people to drive by and make them feel like museums.

You can invest a bit more money up front to make them look like beautiful aesthetic buildings, and I actually want to tour local school districts and kids to go through and say, "This is what a data center is. This is what powers your day-to-day life,’” Genoot said on Yahoo Finance’s Opening Bid (video above). More from Yahoo Scout What infrastructure challenges face the AI data center industry?

How is Hut 8 addressing community concerns about data centers? How did Hut 8 transform from bitcoin mining to AI data centers? What are Hut 8's major AI data center deals worth?

Hut 8 is a remarkable transformation story — a former bitcoin miner that is rapidly becoming one of the most important AI data center operators in North America. And its deal flow is starting to flesh this out. The first blockbuster deal came in December 2025 when Hut 8 signed a 15-year, $7 billion lease with cloud infrastructure provider Fluidstack for 245 megawatts of capacity at its River Bend campus in Louisiana.

Google ( GOOG ) is acting as a financial backstop for the entire term. Then in May, Hut 8 dropped an even bigger bomb — a 15-year, $9. 8 billion lease at its Beacon Point campus in Nueces County, Texas, covering 352 megawatts of AI factory capacity.

The deal sports three five-year renewal options that could push the total contract value to $25. 1 billion. With both deals combined, Hut 8 now sits on 597 megawatts of contracted AI data center capacity worth roughly $16.

8 billion in total contract value. The stock is up 185% year to date. Hut 8’s market cap currently stands at $15 billion.

Continued Genoot, “From a noise perspective, if there are generators, we actually have them enclosed in an enclosed system … And then from a water perspective … we're building closed-loop systems, which means the cooling in those systems don't actually require water to cool. ” Data center builders have their work cut out for them in addressing a range of local government and resident concerns. Per BofA Global Research, up to 75% of a data center's total water consumption happens off-site — not from the cooling towers you can see on campus, but from the power plants.

At the scale AI is now operating, millions of liters of water per day are being indirectly consumed by routine AI interactions. The power picture is just as alarming. GPU-based server electricity demand is growing at roughly 30% per year, says BofA.

The problem is no longer whether America can generate enough total energy — it’s whether local grids can physically deliver continuous power to the right location at the right moment without buckling under the strain. Story Continues And then there is the materials story, which almost nobody is talking about. BofA estimates that every single incremental megawatt of new data center capacity embeds roughly 60 to 75 tons of metals — primarily copper — meaning the AI build-out is quietly running a massive, sustained extraction on global commodities markets that was never priced into anyone's model.

Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor and a member of Yahoo Finance's editorial leadership team. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi , Instagram , and LinkedIn . Tips on stories?

Email brian. sozzi@yahoofinance. com.